Inescapable Truth #4 “The Docu-Drama”

The Docu-Drama

You may have spent a great deal of time trying to deny it, or rationalize it, or just plain avoid thinking about it, but the truth of the matter is simply:

IF YOU CONTINUE TO SMOKE YOU WILL PROBABLY DIE A PAINFUL AND LINGERING DEATH

Perhaps emphysema will get you, and your will drown in your own phlegm.

Perhaps cancer will get you, and you will be eaten alive from the inside out by your own cells.

Perhaps the cancer will be of the mouth or the throat, and you will be disfigured or have to talk through a hole in your neck, or with the aid of a vibrating device.

Perhaps the plaque that nicotine and tar generates in your bloodstream will clog the arteries to your heart so thoroughly that your chest seizes like an overheated Chevy large block and you die writhing in pain on the bathroom floor before you can even call for help.

All these scenarios aren’t just “possible” for a smoker. They’re highly damn “probable”.

By coming to terms with this idea, you gain a valuable psychological tool in your effort to quit smoking.

I call it the “docu-drama”.

Create one for yourself. Commit it mentally to video tape in your head. Make it very realistic, and detailed. And above all… make it SCARY. The scarier the better.

When the urge to smoke is gripping you hard (and it will… oh yes… it will), and you need strength, and something to help you through. Haul out your “docu-drama”. Load it up on the VCR in your mind, and play it back a few times. You’ll get this sort of cold… clammy feeling in your heart. Good.

Whenever the monkey was hard on my back, I’d play back my mental videotape of my very own “docu-drama”. It went something like this:

The scene opens in a stereotypical “doctors office”. It’s a coolly sanitary, but strangely elegant office. It’s mostly furnished with expensive, dark wood paneling and hunter-green drapes and accessories. His desk is one of those huge, elegant, oak affairs. It’s stained dark too, with expensive looking nick-knacks and such lying on the expensive glass sheet he’s got to protect the top of it. Hanging on the wall are all of his fancy diploma’s. His chair is a gigantic, comfortable, “doctors” chair. Mine is a plush, red-leather affair. You know the type. With the oversized brass tacks all around the trim. Very nice.

I’m sitting across from my doctor.

He’s holding a rather large manila envelope. You know the kind. The ones that x-rays come in?

He’s looking at me rather gravely. I don’t like the look.

He shakes his head sadly.

He pushes the envelope across that huge oak desk at me.

I slide the x-ray out of the envelope.

In the back of my mind I can hear his words, but they don’t register on me… I’m too busy trying not to pass out because of the black spots I see on that picture I’m holding. Words like… “advanced beyond treatment” and “already spread to your lymph nodes” and “3 months at the outside” and “have the time to get your affairs in order and say goodbye to your loved ones”

You get the picture.

When you weigh the drama played out in a scene like this… you feel pretty stupid for ever having wanted a cigarette. At least I know I did. Perhaps you will too.

It sure helped me find perspective when I was losing it.